The Future of Mental Health May Rely on...Destruction?

I’m gripping a baseball bat in a graffiti-covered basement tucked near the lower tip of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, a recently regentrified 538 acres in the Big Apple where transients are outnumbered only by overpriced eateries. On a stool in front of me sits an ancient—and I mean ancient—laptop. My goal, I’m advised, is to smash this junk technology to pieces. In fact, I’m paying $2 a minute to do just that. Welcome to the Wrecking Club.

Much like zombie Frappuccinos, fidget spinners, Beyoncé’s offspring and Melanie Trump’s doppelganger, New York’s Wrecking Club has become a viral sensation this year. And like any obedient American millennial in the year 2017, I am all about viral sensations, especially those that offer to help us become better versions of ourselves. Since its opening in January, a multitude of agitated New Yorkers have flocked to the Club’s supposed stress-free oasis in the hopes of bidding adieu to whatever ails them mentally and emotionally. In reality, the Club is not anything like an oasis in the literal sense, but an average basement that may or may not have previously housed a struggling rock band. Within these bare concrete walls, however, people produce a different kind of excruciating sound as they destroy all sorts of material throwaways. A 30-minute session costs $60 and gives you access to a room stocked with anything from old electronics to furniture to glassware. Smashers are given baseball bats, golf clubs and crowbars. And then you just go nuts, all in the name of therapy.

We have more answers than ever yet Americans are more stressed now than they have been any time in the past decade.

As Apple celebrates the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone with the upcoming release of the iPhone X, a $1,150 edition that boasts facial recognition and wireless charging, I’ve valiantly traveled here to figure out if aggression therapy, the unofficial concept behind Wrecking Club, is a legitimate pursuit to combat information overload or simply a gimmick. After all, technology is supposed to make life easier, but it seems to be doing anything but. We have more answers than ever, more conveniences at our fingertips and more autonomy than ever to control how we’re perceived by outsiders. And yet the mental health journal Psychiatric Services recently concluded that 8.6 million Americans suffer from serious psychological distress. Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association reported in February that Americans are more stressed now than they have been any time in the past decade. More than half of Americans feel significantly stressed over the current political climate, itself driven by social media, Twitter feuds and misinformation. Throw in a few tweets by our current president, the threat of nuclear war, the threat of our nudes leaking, the threat of missing happy hour, the threat of missing a work email, the threat of your iPhone X order not going through, the threat of running out of data or phone storage or losing your contacts—it’s all enough to make anyone want to pulverize something.

One nondescript door and rickety elevator ride later, I’m greeted by Tom Daly, Wrecking Club’s founder. “I knew I wanted to start my own business and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out exactly what I wanted to do,” he explains from behind a counter that looks borrowed from a dentist’s office. “I was trying to think of human needs—basic human needs—and thought about how if you’re at a beach, people like to throw rocks or things like that. It’s always fun to just bash something. This is one desire that didn’t seem to really be dealt with too much.”

The story of how Daly started this whole operation could be the basis of a Will Ferrell comedy. (Paramount, call me.) Living in Stamford, Connecticut and working for an energy company, Daly felt unfulfilled. “I was going to work, nine-to-five in a cubicle, in front of my computer all day and doing my thing. Coffee in the morning, break rooms, a conference room. All that stuff.” In an ocean of suburban blandness, Daly yearned for a new adventure. And then came his idea. He quit his job and moved to New York City.

When the Club’s doors swung open, the cooncept caught on almost immediately. “Almost overnight, the appointments backed up for months,“ he says. "It lit a fire under me to get things going quickly.” He’s since he’s been booked solid.

I’m eager to put Daly’s mad experiment to the test. After presumably signing away my life in a lengthy release, I suit up in a ragtag collection of protective clothing: an orange Bob the Builder construction hat, workout gloves to protect my dainty, soft-as-a-pillow writer’s hands and a heavy jacket to shield my body from shards. Daly shows me what I’ll be smashing today: a TV cabinet, a laptop and some delightfully spotless wine glasses. I imagine all of the objects will crunch, crash and crack in the most pleasurable way. In the immortal words of David Bowie, let’s dance.

Like in some sadistic horror film, the Wrecking Club provides me with an array of dangerous tools. I opt for a yellow crow bar. When it comes time to smash the laptop in front of me though, I hesitate. Something about breaking this helpless computer makes me hesitate. So I decide turn my focus on to all the problems I’ve had with my own laptops; the times they’ve frozen at the exact worst moment, the buffering while watching a YouTube video, the documents I’ve lost after working on them for hours. At this point, I have no choice but to obliterate this baby. I pick up the crowbar, heavier than I thought, and slam it down, throwing all of my sluggish body into it. The machine cracks and I immediately feel like a monster. What. Have. I. Done? But once again, I remember past technological issues and slam that crowbar down again. And it starts to feel good.

“The cool thing about what we’re doing is it’s all about aggression,” he says. “It’s human instinct. This is part of every single person on earth.” That seems spot-on. As I continue hammering that laptop and then a TV stand and some glassware, I feel like a wild animal on the loose. I am the Hulk, but much less green and for some reason with much more rage. I am tapping into something deep inside me, something I never knew was there. With each hit, I decide to think with intention; something that really annoys me. The guy at my gym who always blows his nose without covering it? Whack! The fact my oven’s been broken in my apartment since I moved in? Boom! That article from the Atlantic in which Jean M. Twenge wrote that today’s adolescents are perilously close to suffering a mental health crisis? I lift my bat and whack again.

All of this crashing and crushing makes me think, who exactly comes to this place anyway? “We get mother/daughter, father/son, girlfriend/boyfriend, guys’ night, girls’ night, bachelorette and bachelor parties,” Tom breathlessly lists. “We have everyone from 18th birthdays to people in their 60s and 70s. I wish I could tell you we have a demographic, but our demographic is humans.”

Perhaps, then, it makes sense why I’m so into my experience. As my half-hour appointment winds down, I begin to sweat from the physical force required to break these darn wine glasses. Nobody said releasing this pent-up aggression would be easy. Then I remember how I once stained a perfectly good white polo with wine from an errant glass. Them glasses begged for a punishing. Out of objects and with a mess on the floor to show for it, I indeed feel more at ease than when I walked in. Believe it or not, Daly’s insane gimmick actually seems to have worked.

Before it’s time to bid adieu, Daly has one request—a favor, really. The wireless router in his office had been acting up and he was forced to buy a new one. Would I mind smashing the old one to bits? No problem, Tom. Anything for a new friend. With that, I grab a baseball bat, and sayanora went both the router—and my last ounce of New Yorker agitation.